June 12, 2011

What Is Being Described by Some Boston LGBT Who Attended Saturday's Boston Pride March 2011, The Appearance of John K. O'Toole, Candidate for District Three Boston City Councillor, as "A Misleading Representation of His Support for the LGBT Community," the Candidate Himself Begs to Differ

Whether it was activism on the part of a so far "anonymous" person advocating for the LGBT Community or a political stunt perpetrated by one of the campaigns in the Boston City Councillor, District Three race, Saturday's Boston Pride March yielded the name of one particular candidate, John K. O'Toole, who did in fact sign VoteOnMarriage.org's Anti-Gay Marriage Petition back in 2005.

KnowThyNeighbor.org received an email Saturday from Alex Scheufler who attended Boston Pride 2011 of a photo of one of at least a dozen laminated posters along the parade route which copied candidate, O'Toole's, name and address from the KnowThyNeighbor.org website which houses the Massachusetts Secretary of State's Database of the list of signatories on the Ballot Initiative from 2005 which if successful would have retracted the Goodridge Decision and ended Marriage Equality here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. These posters which faced outward towards the crowd included a red circled X and clearly and boldly spelled out "Don't Elect John O'Toole, He Works Against Us."

As a point of clarification, no one at KnowThyNeighbor.org was responsible for these posters. However, this type of activism IS exactly what our core mission advocates and encourages. KnowThyNeighbor applauds those who take it upon themselves to stand by their own personal activism. We provide the lists of those who sign anti-LGBT petitions and our blog is replete with facts and names of those who contribute to, are involved with and are complicit in campaigns that would hurt our whole community. Some of those names would surprise you.

But as always, I ask those activists who are being brave and standing up for themselves and our community to remember--KnowThyNeighbor is about empowerment through dialogue. Dialogue IS the silver bullet. It is important to hear from a signer why he or she signed this anti-gay petition. You may all remember Mike Cahillane for District Attorneywho said he signed the anti-gay petition knowingly in an exchange for that signature gatherer's signature on the Greyhound Rights petition that Cahillane was sponsoring--not good! And of course, can we not forget Mary Z. Connaughton for Auditor, who refused to answer why she signed the anti-gay petition, claiming it was none of anyone's business, even when grilled by NECN--equally not good. But these candidates and politicians all have phone numbers listed on line and Candidate for District Three Boston City Councillor, John K. O'Toole is no exception.

At 4:33 PM, June 11, 2011, Candidate John K. O'Toole, returned KnowThyNeighbor's call. He was unaware of the posters which were lining the Boston Pride Parade route. He was made aware of the fact that his name appeared on KnowThyNeighbor as a signer of the anti-gay petition about 4 months ago and he claims to have faxed an affidavit to KnowThyNeighbor about 1 month ago. We are checking into that. Mr. O'Toole would like to see his actual signature, but I reminded him that this is nearly impossible as those records at the Secretary of the Commonwealth are most likely destroyed.

John O'Toole claims to have signed many petitions during the 2005 ballot initiative cycle including beer and wine in supermarkets, dog rights etc. He made it very clear to KnowThyNeighbor.org that he is not happy with his name being associated with the Anti-Gay Marriage petition and that he has taken very forthright actions to support Marriage Equality from political and personal perspectives. The former as being a co-signer of a 2007 petition which was drawn up by the Dorchester pro-LGBT activist group, DotOUT, as a tool to lobby Senator Jack Hartto switch his vote on Marriage Equality before the last vote. John O'Toole has also marched in three separate Boston Pride Parades and when asked by us, he immediately spoke out in favor of the current Transgender Equal Rights Bill which is in committee and before the Massachusetts Legislature.

Richard O'Mara, Dorchester Activist and DotOUT Steering Committee Member, had much to say about this. According to O'Mara, DotOUT has not yet given its endorsement in the District Three City Councillor race and from a personal standpoint, the appearance of John O'Toole's name on the KnowThyNeighbor list of signers of the anti-gay marriage petition disturbs him. "I have not jumped on to support John (O'Toole) yet and am not comfortable with him yet due to his signing," said O'Mara, "To the best of our knowledge, he signed, and John needs to do some explaining. He needs to address it." O'Mara also said that his own feelings about John O'Toole's signing are known all the way up to Mayor Menino's office and mentioned the Mayor himself and Justin Holmes as being aware of this.

In the many phone calls that KnowThyNeighbor made to provide fair coverage of this story, it was suggested to me from two separate unrelated sources that fingers are being pointed at one campaign for having created these anti-O'Toole posters which were dispersed and mounted throughout the Boston Pride Parade Route. Both sources suggested the Craig Galvin campaign as the alleged perpetrator. One source said, "Craig Galvin's campaign has been making a very big deal about John O'Toole being a signer of the anti-gay petition for weeks now." Craig Galvin, who also marched with supporters at Boston Pride this Saturday is running for the same City Councillor seat as John O'Toole.

When I confronted Craig Galvin about these alleged accusations, Galvin stated that no one from his campaign that he knows of was responsible for these posters. Galvin also stated that he and his fellow marchers were very aware of the posters along the route and that they saw the posters on Saturday "like everyone else did." Everyone else (apparently) did not include John O'Toole or O'Toole's seventeen fellow marchers according to O'Toole. KnowThyNeighbor needs to point out that these posters were strategically mounted to sign posts along the route facing outward so that parade onlookers would see them, not the participants in the march itself. Craig Galvin is a Marriage Equality supporter and wanted me to know that it is a "big issue" to him as he is a supporter of Constitutional Rights. Like with O'Toole, I asked Galvin how he felt about the current Transgender Equal Rights Bill before the Legislature and while his initial response to me was, "I thought you were going to ask me questions about the Pride Parade" and "I need to look into the Transgender Bill and get back to you," he did call me back later that evening and told me that he supports it.

Some things never change. Politics will always be politics and the truth may not always be told. I am sure we will be hearing much more about this race for the Boston City Councillor, District Three seat. LGBT people have alot of soul searching to do and hopefully so do the candidates. One thing though, it seems that we have not forgotten about the wounds that were inflicted upon us in our continued fight for equality.

February 13, 2011

Here We Are In February of 2011 And The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Which Was the First in the Nation to Legalize Same Gender Marriage, Which Defeated Attempts to Take Away These Marriage Rights Through a Ballot Initiative Process and Which Has an Attorney General Who is Suing the United States to End DOMA on Behalf of Its Citizens, Still Has Not Been Able to Pass Legislation Protecting Transgender/Transsexual People Against Workplace, Housing, and Public Accomodations Discrimination

My analogy is that we trying to bake a cake. The recipe is correct, everything is mixed, the batter is in a pan in the oven, the oven works, the temperature button is on. Why don't we have a cake? Because the power company has NOT provided any electricity. The ONLY explanation here is that MA Transgender Rights Bill is being blocked from the top down. Someone or some people are not allowing this bill to move forward, be voted on. This month's bombshell in Boston Spirit Magazine of an interview with former Senator and Bill Co-Sponsor Richard Tisei (R) who blames MassEquality for "losing the public relations battle" on the bill and "dropping the ball" which caused the current situation. Tisei also recounts how he helped set up MassEquality to participate in the MA GOP Convention in 2010 by securing MEQ with a booth there and access to events at the convention including parties for networking. According to Tisei, all this was pre-arranged with MassEquality 3 weeks in advance and the day of the Convention MEQ pulled a 'no-show." Instead of being there to combat the onslaught of what Tisei describes as a Kansas-based anti-trans cellphone campaign directed at over 3500 GOP delegates, MassEquality chose to use that day and Charlie Baker's response to the "Bathroom Bill" messaging immediately for its campaign tool to help Deval Patrick win re-election. But probably the most disturbing of the Tisei revelations he alleges against MassEquality is its lack of lobbying with the co-sponsors. That MassEquality "came at the beginning of the legislative session" when they filed the bill, obtained 104 co-sponsors including himself, and then in 2 years, the co-sponsors "never heard from them again." According to Tisei, "They never called. They never did anything. They never asked for help."

Back in August 2010, after the end of the Legislative Session and with no vote having been taken up on the MA Transgender Rights Bill, KnowThyNeighbor attended JTIMA's Prop 8 Day at Copley Square. I was immediately approached by MEQ volunteers "postcarding" for the MA Trans Bill asking for my email address and if I supported the bill. Outraged I took it up with some of the young volunteers and asked, "where the hell were you for the past year?" Dan Hoffer, a MassEquality hire, originally from the Harold Ford campaign and having worked on the Cape Ann part of our marriage fight, now one who deals with legislative work was immediately put on the defensive and told me, "we have 25-30 legislative campaigns we are working on, we cannot be expected to have worked on the Trans Bill too." So, the Lobby Days, the Hearings, the Press Play, the Visibility---all what I call a Potemkin Village.

According to activist, Denise Leclair, in 2003 Transgender/Transsexual people were told to wait until after Goodridge was done with, then from between 2004 and 2007 were told to wait until after we successfully killed the ballot initiative, then were told to wait until after MA got rid of the 1913 Law which prohibited out of state same sex couples from marrying here if their home states did not recognize their marriages (this repeal was in July of 2008). Were Transgender/Transsexual people told to "wait" for so long that now it is just "company policy" to pretend we are working on their rights instead of being truthful? Equality Maryland has no problem it seems leaving TG/TS people out of the public accommodations part of its bill right now as we speak while having all of the LGB(T) messaging centers like Pam's House Blend, Bilerico Project and others promote this bill like its the new wave of trans support coming from our community. But with MassEquality and its messaging centers I guess it was okay to pretend to be giving priority to our bill instead of being truthful on its mission--providing support for 25-30 legislators. Where was BayWindows or any of the other media, including BlueMassGroup, the various blogs, newspapers etc to get to the bottom of what was holding this bill up? NOTHING from any of them.

And this points to my suggestion to all of you to pause and think about this. I personally do not think MassEquality was calling all the shots here. Oh it was complicit all right. Remember my cake analogy from earlier? MassEquality is not the electric company. It is more the oven. This bill was not voted on because the Speaker of the House and the Senate President, both Dems, would not call a vote. There was no "community outrage" directed at either of these two entities which is in and of itself telling-- so let's go up the ladder a little further...John Walsh, MA Dem Party Chair who may not have wanted to lose any votes in various races for Dems? We are being told that many Dems would have taken a hit on this bill. Which I find funny because, 104 leges co-sponsored the bill in a very public record...where was their "hit?" Are we expected to believe that the anti-lgbt groups would make a distinction between sponsorship and voting in their anti-trans messaging? Another thing to note here, in Twelve States and the District of Columbia, where Gender Identity and Expression are part of the anti-discrimination laws, not one state produced a ballot initiative directed to remove these laws by popular vote. So what was the problem? Inquiring minds, pissed off activists like myself and transgender/trannsexual people who have been back-burnered and betrayed want to know.

We still have not been able to identify the man or people behind the curtain, though we can now easily see what room the curtain is hanging in. I throw this out there...Maybe the ladder goes up a little higher to Congress where our own Barney Frank who once removed transgender/transsexual people from the languishing ENDA Bill, has been saying recently that you cannot expect to get a anti-discrimination bill which includes gender identity and expression passed in Congress if you cannot even get it passed in a state like Massachusetts. But my question to Congressman Frank is this..."on that comment, are you stating fact or projecting?"

July 11, 2010

Now That Pentagon Spokesperson, Geoff Morrell, Has Disclosed The Name of the Private Contractor, Westat, Which Created the Bias-Baiting Language in The Don't Ask Don't Tell Survey, KnowThyNeighbor is Asking for the Names of the "Professionals at Westat" Who Developed These Questions

While Servicemembers Legal Defense Network Executive Director Aubrey Sarvis warns LGBT servicemembersthat the truly inflammatory and bias-baitinglanguage in the DADT study sent out to 400K service members last week may in fact be the cause of privacy concerns and she is asking that they do not participate in the survey, KnowThyNeighbor is taking a different approach.

KnowThyNeighbor is demanding to know the names of all individuals involved in the composing of the survey--all those involved in the creation of these questions including the privately contracted Westat employees, members of the Pentagon Working Group (as it is being called) and anyone else who had actual "hands on" involvement with the wording, choice and/or vetting of these questions. KnowThyNeighbor is also demanding to know the process in selecting the criteria used to formulate these bias-baiting questions. This process affecting a public policy and the lives of, for now, voiceless American heroes who risk their lives for this country needs to be remain in the public's eye and in the public realm.

Geoff Morrell, Pentagon spokesperson, admitted that No LGBT Advocacy Groups were consulted in the process of question selection in this DADT Survey and he assures the public and the servicemen and women participating in the survey (400,000 to be exact) that any perceived biases in the survey were only due diligence "to help the military determine what adjustments might be necessary 'when DADT is repealed.'" But before the surveys to the 400,000 participants have been returned, Morell and the Pentagon have already suggested the segregation of troops "in order to preserve the privacy and modesty of heterosexual service members in group showers and barracks." So it seems this survey already "skewed" to a foregone conclusion regarding troop segregation based solely on the nature of the questions themselves.

Why does KnowThyNeighbor want the names of the individuals involved with and responsible for the DADT Survey Creation? To run these names against party affiliation databases, campaign contribution databases, public affiliations, known religious affiliations, associations and connections, etc. Too many brave men and women serving this country have been kept silent far too long, being told that you can die for this country but don't you dare tell anyone who you love. And now they are being dragged through this disgusting process, further demeaned by the nature of the questions of this"survey" and treated once again as sub-human, morally corrupt animals. Well, it is time to know who is responsible.

May 27, 2006

Paul Asher-Best, the selectman from Truro who had the guts to call into question the chief of rescue operations Leo Childs’s ability to provide equal care to gay and lesbian members of the community, when he discovered Childs had signed the anti-gay marriage petition is back in the news. For a full story look to the Cape Codder, Friday, May 26th reported by Matthew Belson.

It seems that there was a review of Child's alleged bias by local fire chiefs and none was found. Evidently, these local chiefs do not consider signing a petition to change our state constitution to make it legal to discriminate against a group law abiding, tax-paying citizens of the Commonwealth a "bias." But then again, if the Truro/Provincetown Representative, Shirley Gomes, does not understand the meaning of equality, then why should we expect lay people to?

Rep. Gomes voted for last year's amendment to the Constitution which would have dis-allowed same-sex marriage but given gays and lesbians civil unions. In her quote to the Cape Codder, when asked how she intends to vote on the July 12th amendment, Gomes says, "I am waiting for input from the Judicial Supreme Court." "One of the reasons I favored the vote before [for the first amendment] was that it granted equal rights under the law to every individual."

Oh does it now??? Since the Honorable Representative listens to the SJC on matters of a Constitutional nature, I am sure she remembers what these Justices said about the granting of civil unions to same-sex couples when asked for an advisory opinion by Ms. Gomes' very own legislature. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court said:

"The history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal," The bill that would allow for civil unions, but falls short of marriage, makes for "unconstitutional, inferior, and discriminatory status for same-sex couples." see story

Now getting back to Selectman Paul Asher-Best... As I said before, Mr. Asher-Best did not "fire Paul Childs." Mr. Childs was unanimously voted down for re-appointment to the Board of Firemen for a variety of reasons. Anyone who pays attention to local town boards knows that often these votes are arbitrary as was the case in Truro. However, the reason why this story has gotten so much press is for the simple reason that Selectman Asher-Best was willing to stand up for a group of residents of the town of Truro that are every bit as much worthy of representation as any other group--but this time this group happened to be gay.

May 26, 2006

Last week I received an interesting telephone call from John Russo, a representative of the Article 8 Alliance and an associate of the infamous Brian Camenker, asking me to dinner. I had debated Mr. Russo at Emerson College and I know him to be a nice guy, however, the first thoughts that went through my head consisted of illegal tape recordings via hidden wires ala "Fistgate" or some sort of ambush or even being shanghaied for "conversion therapy" at some Exodus camp hidden deep in the woods of Reading. So as soon as the fear subsided, I did what I always do, I brought a little humor to the situation and inquired of Mr. Russo if he was asking me out on a date. John laughed and said that in all his years he never had had "the inclination." Well, I am glad that we had cleared that up so early in our relationship...

Could the Director of KnowThyNeighbor.org, the organization which promotes dialogue on the topic of equal rights for the GLBT community, respectfully decline an invitation to open a dialogue? Funny how we get what we wish for...Of course I accepted the invitation. I was treated to a wonderful fare of salmon at Salem's Strega Restaurant. And this two and a half hour conversation ran the gamut from the first topic, three-some marriages in the Netherlands to that last very brief yet seemingly obsessive topic among Article 8 devotees, " fisting." Both of these could only be met with typical Tom Lang humor as I quickly ascribed them to heterosexual fantasy and fetish which made John laugh, but we did also discuss more serious topics such as the importance of positive influences on children, the need to understand and correct abusive behaviors and on the topic of marriage, that its impact on the GLBT community would be evolutionary as it was in the heterosexual community.

Did we come to any agreements? Yes. Did I agree that the gay community has its share of problems? Yes. Did Mr. Russo agree that the straight world has a huge amount of issues and problems too. Yes. Did either of us think that we would change the other? No. You see, John Russo, like so many others at Article 8 believe that being gay is a choice. And with that there is no debate or real discussion, only a wall that I was not able to tear down. But the importance of this dinner WAS the dialogue itself, not so much the topics. Mr. Russo told me that I was only one of three gay people that he had ever spoken to in deep meaningful conversation. Brian Camenker said a similar thing today in when I called him to tell him that I would be doing this post--and that says alot, don't you think?

Again I was hit with a humorous thought, though maybe it is more ironic than funny... When we sit with our opponents face-to-face and really, really talk... it is very hard for them even with their fears and prejudices to tell us that we are "going to Hell," or that we are evil, or that we are trying to destroy society as we often read in blogs and on websites. But this is where the irony kicks in...likewise it is very hard for us to look them straight in the eyes and to call them "bigots." So get out there and have those meaningful conversations ladies and gentlemen, face-to-face, and remember, this isn't about our opponents, this is about you. I leave you with that...